Both Parties Call Victory
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory
Summary: BJ confronts the idea that sometimes, no mattter what road you take, you always end up in the same place.


AUTHOR'S NOTES: My muse lives! *cackles ala the good doctor Frankenstein* ^_~ At least, I hope she does-- this fic has been something of slow going, but I'm mostly happy with how it turned out. This is sort of a BJ character-piece.... I don't know, I was trying to get inside his head and figure out some of his motivations. Lots of slash in this-- I went for a touch of fluff and got... well, you know how it goes. ^^;; The pairing is Hawkeye/BJ, as if you hadn't guessed. It's written in second person, which is unusual for me. I hope that doesn't take away from the story. Not to mention the fact it's kind of weird. I was thinking about Hawkeye and BJ's relationship and who would make the first move. In most of my fics, BJ crosses that line, so I thought I'd try a different approach.

Not sure if the title works, but I've changed it a lot already. GRR. ^_^ 

This is dedicated to Leigh, my beloved Josephine and Am-Chau, who kicks butt. Feedback will cause me to love you forever and quite possibly name my next child after you. ^_~

-Meredith

DATE BEGUN: March 17th, 2003

DATE FINISHED: March 23rd, 2003

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Both Parties Call Victory 1/1

by Meredith Bronwen Mallory

mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com

==============================

How else would it start?

You lay in your narrow, green-the-color-of-rotting army cot with your arms at your sides, listening to the faint sounds of Charles stirring within some thin and heavy dream. Your hands grip the blankets, clench and let go and the cot two feet away is occupied only by shadows and absence. 

Inevitable.

--and your wife's round-cheeked, oval face stares black-and-white out from behind the glass. Erin in her arms blissful and unaware, still a mesh of two beings, more aware of her mother than she is of the rest of the world; but Peg's eyes say that they know. They gaze out, vague and unfocused towards that distant tomorrow when you come home; she sees everything, quietly,

__

(Siege, great goddess of silence

breasts bared in an old, battered art textbook

back in college and some kid, cheeky

penciled in words of Latin

meaning 'speak not these words most foul; the truth')

and passes no judgment from her place between the faux-gold rectangle and perched next to the still. 

Inevitable 

_(you were lost in from that first bottle-glass-blue moment)_

is just a word-- the 'in' implying opposite, like inalienable (rights) and indescribable _(horror? pleasure? fear? love?)._ But there is no word in common speech, evitable, as in something you _can_ escape, you _can_ resist, you _can_ prevent. Flip through Hawkeye's dictionary

_["it's got every other book in it, am I right? yeah?"]_

and yes, it's there. You hadn't expected it to be. It dropped out of the layman's usage, somewhere along the line. 

So you can't escape, and you can't resist (and do you even want to?) and though prevention is in your job description, there's just no magic pill for this, Doc. 

Laws as immovable as gravity, as fixed as the planets and the clockwork of the stars. Step aside, out of the path, but you're pulled right back in. 

They call it kismet and fate, ummei and destiny and-- with gazes deep in the off-colored sea of alcohol-- they call it a bitch. 

So-- how else would it start?

Maybe you weren't so lucky-- papers at I-Corps shuffled, rearranged. Peg crying even harder at the airport, and she doesn't even know that you aren't coming back but you are. You're off from Kimpo to some battered Aid Station were your hands will never be clean but you'll still have to dip them inside human bodies. Young men, boys, so raw and straight from battle, and if you think there's a lot of M*A*S*H doctors cracking up, well boy you ain't seen nothing yet. A shell comes too close one day, while you're finishing a tracheotomy-- dangerous in and of itself, you have to fix them up quick or not at all-- and the bare outlines of your shelter come tumbling down like so many nursery rhymes. 

_(Ashes, ashes, we all..._

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall!)

A brief flash here, maybe, under the bright lights of some foreign O.R. Feel the mask over your face and those delicious tendrils of sleep as they curl about you, but still your eyes are a little bit open and you see those twin orbs of separate, bright blue. The rest of that beautiful (tried to use the word handsome, doesn't work) face is washed over with white, and then so is the whole of the world.

His hands were inside you, between your flesh and ribs, repairing, easing and changing-- you watch him joke with other patients as he makes his rounds towards you, and you feel your broken bones throb and recognize. He leans on the railing of your bed, all somehow clumsy, off-kilter grace, smiles at you, makes small talk about your wounds. But then, his eyes seem to see you-- you ask about the patient you were working on before the blast. Relief, then a very quiet sense of pleasure-- first because the boy did live and second because He is saying to you;

"I saw the kids you worked on. I'm impressed, really I am-- what you're doing up there makes our meatball surgery seem like simple pepperoni."

You thank him, wait with unconscious resentment for him to flicker his mercurial attention to someone else, but he's still there, watching you and not disguising it. 

"Name's Hawkeye," he says, extending a hand and a wink, "famous in song and story. You've got real talent, kid-- I can make you a star. You wanna take over for Frank, here? He's not a doctor, but he likes to pretend."

In spite of yourself, you laugh, and say, "My name's Hunnicut, BJ. Formerly of an aid station up near hill twenty four, which has now been blown to hell and gone."

"You're lucky you weren't making a trip to visit old goat-legs yourself," he winks again, and now he's sitting on your bedside _(God, he's not really that close, but _Gah-od_). _"What's BJ stand for?"

And your wedding ring is heavy on your finger, but you don't know what this is, just yet. But you want it, you grab it to you greedily and reach out for more. So you say, so flip but for the first time holding and edge of truth-- "Anything you want."

Or--

On leave from the 8063rd, under the flittering, flashing lights of the Ginza and the window-box kanji saying that, yeah, rice wine is served here. There are girls on the streets and in the bars, exotic and pretty like china dolls lined up in a row above Peg's bed when it was single, virginal and pink. You study the girls like an artist studies flowers-- they are beautiful, each a different tone or shaded shaft of light, but the thought does not cross your mind to hold a hand out to even one of them, or to desire them at all. Then, a bump at your body, a stranger's somehow familiar warmth and you turn around. He's laughing and a bit drunk, but it's very comfortable for him, and his blue eyes are clouded. He was looking to loose something tonight, but it's not what you want him to loose to you, and it's not what you're loosing to him. He stops laughing, then starts again to cover for himself, and now you're talking like old buddies with the girls floating away one by one on disinterested, lilac wafts of perfume. 

"Come back to my room for a night cap? How about a night top hat, or a night helmet?"

Well, the bar is closing and what harm could it do? The next morning you wake up with your nose buried in that ebony-on-gray-on-ebony hair, fully clothed but somehow fused. No, you didn't do anything, and, no, you don't really say anything to each other, just hold on tight and tilt your heads back like savoring fine wine. 

The eight-oh-six-three isn't that far from the four-zero-double-natural.

_(numbers, god damn it. always the numbers._

casualty figures and dosage measurements

milliliters, quarts, liters

leaders and their stupid one inch two inch over the 38th parallel

which is a number, too)

There are whispers, plans. When you go back to your room, you see the black and white shapes making up Peg's visage, and you can't even look in the mirror.

But--

You'll meet him at Rosie's, and dance to 

_(yeah, I got a girl back in)_

'Kalamazoo' on wobbly knees with his hand firm on your hip.

Or--

At a veteran's get-together, with your arm around Peg and everyone wearing name tags saying who and what and where but never why. And maybe you see him across the room, at the punch bowl or with a shadow made of mischievous hazel eyes and curly red hair. Gazes meet, briefly, but that's all-- some times you'll wake up from a dream beside Peg and those will be the eyes you see, but you won't be able to place them. 

Or--

Maybe there's no war at all, some shift in politic and power-- instead it's a medical conference a few years later. You sit slumped in your cold, narrow folding chair while an old, set doctor lectures to you as though you're all first year interns, not full-fledged doctors on the edge of opening your own practices, or better. Your eyes drift to the man doing a mocking half-sleep beside you, he turns and gives you a wink, just a flash of sky. And now you're scribbling on your syllabus, handwriting working in place of voice, like naughty boys in junior high study hall. Quick jokes, jabs at the speaker and the ungodly hour of wake-up-call; passed back and forth. And...

And maybe this is all just a-- cue Potter's voice-- bunch of buffalo bagels. A foil, an excuse, a veil over your eyes; the devil made me do it, Peg, honest I couldn't help myself. Or those words on the flickering black and white T.V., five minute dramas of pretty young women and older men sandwiched between soap commercials; 'she stole my husband away!' You always wondered how a lover could be stolen, because enticement is petty and what you don't have may look good, but you just can't know. Stick with the affection you have, safe and familiar as a house you've lived in all your life, worn and bare and cluttered in all the right places.

A person can only be 'stolen' if they want to be.

So, 'inevitable' could be a crutch, another way to block the harsh blood-and-battlefeild colors of Korea, like practical jokes and rowdy gambling sitting next to the camp priest. Like webs of moonshine spun by the spidery still, hunched over the table on so many inhuman legs-- belly pregnant with forgetfulness. 

_(Sometimes, if you get Hawk drunk enough, the strangeness hiding in his bones comes out to play. Sometimes silly; squirrels that help him cheat on Medical exams and finding Radar in a box of kitty litter. But then, too, he speaks of burying corpses so that they will live, of towns that repeat themselves onward forever and, yes, that spinning wheel. The spindle, three sisters or a spider-mother at its helm, always moving and crushing human bones under its mechanical destiny. Yes, if you get Hawkeye drunk enough, he'll tell you the strangest stories.)_

But if these is all just as fruitless as Swamp gin, why, before you even ever _touched_ Hawkeye, did you somehow feel were you being unfaithful? How could you fall off the wagon for Donovan when you'd already been trotting alongside your best friend, feeling with little, insane pleasures the times he would touch you like an extension of himself? 

Donovan-- yes, Carrie, who you saw through the veil of Peg's face, hands searching for familiar landmarks of your wife's body as you and a stranger buried yourself in each other's flesh. Her hair was feathery and flyaway in your hands, she cried 'John, John, why?', but instead of saying 'Peg', you very nearly called for--

Hawkeye, you keep having this dream about Hawkeye, with his stomach flayed open right in the middle of the O.R. They all see, but they don't care-- the surgical silk is coiled where his internal organs should be; Margaret and Nurse Baker and Nurse Bigalow take the thread from him. The doctors sew, pulling from Hawkeye's spool as he screams so loud it has no sound at all. 

No one ever warned you about this. Watch out for those foreign girls, they said, for loose nurses, for the chance you may be tempted to check into a hotel without your toothbrush.

__

(says Hawkeye, watching you, and you just know Carlye has touched him, you can sense the places her fingers and lips have caressed, but you say you've never been tempted, no, never, never and that is a lie)

What they didn't say was, be careful of companionship, friendship; be wary of connections that pull you in with sweet, sadistic need until it's not that you can't get free, it's that you don't want to. 

And you love Peg, and you love Hawkeye and both these things which should contradict each other somehow exist at the same time; it's like gravity working while things fall up, the earth circling the sun while the sun returns the favor. 

Impossible. Irrational. Insane.

_("As opposed to just being in Korea?")_

It could have happened all those other ways, but it didn't. 

Instead, it started with his arms around you that very first day, as you vomited up your other life and your innocence and all those plastic dreams suburbia supplied you with. A hand trailing down your spine, gently-- there, there, it's okay, we're all consigned to hell here. And below that, somehow, other words-- I forgive you for and I hate you for and I want you for not being the person I want you to be. 

Later; another embrace, and your body realized how long it had been waiting in between the times he'd held you. Your lips went to his neck, knowing he wouldn't let you say it, but kissing against his pulse-point so he would know anyway. Korea might as well have been Alpha Centari and a million stars away from the place you used to call home. 

_(What if one day I crack under the pressure, a tiny fissure in glass, induced by too much heat or too much cold? Extremes. What if I go home and pretend to be the person I grew out of-- if I wear his clothing and I kiss his wife and I read his daughter bedtime stories-- but one day I stop, I look in the mirror too long and it all comes crashing down? And the person who's face I see isn't anyone I know, and the dust and blood of Korea is overwhelming in my memory so I can't even smell that vanilla-lemon Peg sprays after she vacuums? What if I break, just like a clockwork mechanism and all the words come out and I start to say that, I wasn't faithful, that I loved him and what if Peg sees, really sees, this person I've become? What if the horror of this war lays low and waits until I'm least expecting it, pouncing with claws that cradle like steel and He won't be there so how will I ever get out in one piece?)_

Because it happened, whether evitable and 'in'-- no matter how hard you tried only to take what a friend would, you always ended up taking more-- and this is how it went:

Set the scene: Night in Korea, when the country sometimes forgets what season it is, delivering heat after a autumn day or chill in the late spring-- a madman's weather report from inside his padded cell. The moon was round and jaundiced, you were watching it vaguely as you walked towards the officer's club, the color as sick and hypnotic as a cobra's eye. No different than any other night, really, but there was just that cold wind coiling around your spine to say otherwise. You put your hands in your pocket, thought of fire water to warm your insides. No use going back to the Swamp, even if Frank was on Post-Op duty, because his empty bed would be a blessing, but the vacant one across from it wouldn't be. 

With your eyes on the sour moon, you were too tired to regulate your thoughts; instead you pictured that new nurse-- the one that replaced Donovan-- Hawkeye was wooing. In your mind, you gazed at her conjured image with purely academic interest. Low cheekbones and a round face, middling-tall and thin as a rail, with limpid green eyes; the only time she'd ever spoken to you, her voice was rather rough and unremarkable. Briefly, there was a flicker in your mind-- Hawkeye, leaning over her in a shadowy corner, speaking and murmuring words into her throat and the smooth slope of her shoulder. Once, you'd heard the nurses giggling, a little too much punch at a party, and they were talking about sex so naturally they ended up talking about Hawkeye. You overheard them, passing by their table headed for the genuine article leaning up against the bar, waving you over and offering you a drink; 'so', said a nurse who's name and face have faded-- she seemed so prim, though, you were surprised at her casual vulgarity-- 'is Hawkeye a purely tits-and-ass man?'

You stopped, right in the middle of the floor for a moment, and started wondering about that yourself. You started laughing, hurried over and took that drink from Hawkeye, because honestly, what were you thinking?

Not the first time thinking about Hawkeye in a sexual context; not the last time either. But there was something more to it than that-- a want-- more than hands that would roam and then fade. Sometimes Hawkeye would recline on his bunk, watching you with blue eyes shifting hues and all you would want to do would be to lay down and curl up beside him. 

So, under Korea's sick night dome, you thought of Hawkeye in the supply tent, and where his hands might go. 

_(I shouldn't be thinking like this.)_

'Should' is a wonderfully guilt-inducing word. 

Opening the door of the Officer's club, you found yourself gazing full on into that stranger-girl's face-- pale flesh surrounding eyes like washed out jade. She looked up briefly from sweeping, moving the broom with vicious clumsiness; her eyes narrowed and she tucked a stray black lock away from her face, bending back to her work. 

"Hello," you said, and found you couldn't remember her name, "I thought Hawk was supposed to be doing the sweeping tonight-- you, off to the supply tent. Isn't O-club maintenance up to Igor?"

"Someone has to do it," she rolled her shoulders, face turned downward. "Yeah, Hawkeye did sweep me off my feet-- then he set me back down and gave me a handshake."

"A handshake?" you repeated, watching her poke the disinterested dust, "That's not like him."

She said, "Yeah, well," and you turned to walk out with your eyes on the ground, trying not to think. 

In the Swamp, Hawkeye had laid his body back haphazardly on the cot and seemed to have left it there. His blue eyes followed your entrance, but they were unfocused and somehow guarded.

"Ran into," you waved your hand, still unable to remember the nurse's name, but wanting to start conversation, "-- she said you left her high and dry."

"I apologized," he tipped his head, almost looking at you upside down, "like a gentleman. I offered to let her keep the wine, but she didn't want it."

"Huh," you said, stripping off your heavy overcoat and shrugging into your robe, "Why?"

Hawkeye closed his eyes, "Wasn't in the mood."

"The great Hawkeye Pierce, not in the mood to partake of carnal pleasures?" You frowned, honestly a little worried and taking comfort in flippancy, "Excuse me while I go out into the compound and await the Horsemen of the Apocalypse." 

He raised an eyebrow, "If you do see them, tell 'em I could use a ride back to Maine. I hate this place." And before you could say that you hated it too, his silver tongue lashed out lazily with, "She wasn't who I wanted. Damn it. Besides, with all the unscheduled partaking going on around here, I figured someone ought to be here tonight. The rats might get an itch to redecorate if they think we're leaving the place to them." 

Your hand was tight on the martini glass, "Hawk--" But you were thinking about Hawkeye, sitting between you and Donovan and drawing both your gazes to him instead of each other. 

"I didn't mean it," he waved his hand miserably, "I didn't. God, I'm sorry Beej-- I _really_ hate this place. It makes me take out my bad mood on you."

"It's alright," you said, because though it wasn't right then, it would be. "What's gotten into you?" That's a strange saying, like something crawling in his blood stream, but Hawkeye gets that way sometimes, hovering between the ground and the sky and trying to decide if it's worth it. You added, "Thanks for talking sense into me-- about not writing to Peg."

"What am I here for?" Hawkeye asked, somehow philosophical instead of off-the-cuff. "Can I ask you a question then? In return for the favor?"

Hesitant. "Yes. Alright."

He rolled over, resting on his elbow and watching you get ready for bed, "Why?"

"Why what?" You shuddered, "Why did I cheat?"

"No-- I know that," he said, and you wanted to ask him what that reason was because _you_ didn't know. Later, you think he's wrong-- he didn't know the whole story, about reacquainting yourself with female flesh so you can stop dreaming about the kind you've never touched. About dreaming Carrie Donovan into Peg Hunnicut, and then wanting to call his name out instead. "Why contestant number one?"

"We were both in a bad place." Said simply, honestly.

"We're all in a bad place," there was something painfully transparent in Hawkeye's gaze. "Margaret's in a bad place. Nurse Baker is in a bad place. I'm--" But he stopped, making for you a dare but at the same time hiding for fear. "Did she remind you of Peg?"

"Not really-- I thought so, a bit at first, but by the time..." You shook your head, sitting very carefully on your cot, which was two feet too close and two feet too far from his. "No. She wasn't like Peg."

"But you only love Peg," Hawkeye considered, studying the lines on his hands. A flare-up inside you, then-- an unexpected nuclear sunset, the flash-point of a rocket in the sky.

Your voice was angry, "What do you want from me, huh? Alright-- I'm not perfect. I screwed up... I lied when I said I'd never been tempted, I said I was minding my own business, but I butted into yours with that whole Carlye bit. Are you happy now? Are you absolutely delighted?"

Hawkeye reached out, briefly, for something-- for you-- then pulled back, "No. No, I'm not. I'm happy Carlye's gone, and I'm happy Donovan beat it out of here, but I'm not happy you broke your vows to Peg. You love her."

"Will you stop saying that!?" You cried, wondering why the truth should seem so offensive. You love her, you do and did, will and continue to, but there's something else beating just as strongly, clearly dividing that blasted organ, the heart. 

_(What if one day, I don't have enough room to love these two people? What if I go into cardiac arrest, muscle walls collapsing because it's too much to fit into one person? The aorta, giving one last desperate flop inside your chest, bleached and broken on the shore. What if the cause of death is trying to be two people and in two places at once.)_

"I just," you slammed the glass down next to the still, "I can't figure you out, sometimes, Hawk. You of all people never claimed to be perfect! What do you want from me?" Fisting in the fabric of your pants, your hands rested against your knees. Suddenly, he smiled, not happily but with some emotion no one ever bothered to define. 

"Do you want to know?" Hawkeye asked, like a child, motioning you closer with a finger, "You really, _really_ wanna know?"

_(Sometimes, Hawkeye will tell you the strangest things.)_

"Yes, I would," firmly-- you were still angry, and you crossed those two feet. He reached up, swift, smooth lines of motion and caught your mouth with his. Just a click, that final mechanism in place, a copper closed circuit like never before; Hawkeye pulled you down, removed his lips from yours only when he realized you were kissing back. Then his mouth went to your neck, to the lobe of your ear, murmuring things you tried not to pay attention to. Hands cupping, cradling, fingers tracing patterns. 

"Hawkeye---," you turned your head away to avoid another kiss, wanting to let the words out, "I... _God_. I didn't love Donovan. I'm sorry." But you didn't know why. 

"Doesn't matter," Hawkeye looked up briefly, but his eyes were faintly pained when he said, "Don't you know you can do anything you want?"

Someone said, "Please--"

The light was clicked off by a clumsy, uncaring hand-- you laid down on your back with him above you, and yet it seemed that reality shifted between him holding you and you holding him. 

His voice said, in your ear, white hot enough to peel away flesh, "I love you." 

And you opened you mouth to say the same thing, to spite that silent goddess who wouldn't speak the truth, but his kiss swallowed the words whole. 

_(What if one day, I can't stand it any longer and I have to say it, the truth, scream it out loud, even if he was afraid to hear it from me?)_

And it seemed to you, as you touched to that sweet and dangerous edge, that all the world was filled with mirrors. The MASH doctor and his patient from the Aid Station, the two army buddies, the veteran alone with his dreams and the two college boys; they were all there, together, imprisoned and freed by the glass. 

_(What if...)_

You came without a sound, but that didn't matter, they heard; in that lunatic moment, every single one of them was looking at you. 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

__

[to the tune of Old Mc Donald]

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